


another girl in another time

by cityboys



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:58:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cityboys/pseuds/cityboys
Summary: According to the multiverse theory, there is a Sara out there who has her life together. In this world, though, she's just a high school senior with detention to attend, a prom to contemplate and a twin to reconcile with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for [#rarepairsonice](https://rarepairsonice.tumblr.com/), day 4, prompt: high school. with a few other rare pairs sprinkled in the background. largely inspired by motifs in _skam_ s3, because apparently my life now revolves around this show  & writing yoi fic. 
> 
> title from [this](http://thoodleoo.tumblr.com/post/150280336298/i-do-not-imagine-another-girl-in-another-time) translation of sappho's fragment 56. 
> 
> (edit: also !!!! [kitkatsgalore](http://kitkatsgalore.tumblr.com) drew this lovely, lovely [art](http://kitkatsgalore.tumblr.com/post/157754422808/in-another-world-sara-and-mila-are-detention) for this fic, and i cannot be more honoured) ♡

Sara doesn’t need this.

She’s graduating in a few months’ time, she has classes to catch up on, a prom to contemplate and a twin to make up with, and she doesn’t need this.

 _This_ being hour-long after-school detentions for the next three weeks, virtually alone with five other people in a windowless classroom in the far end of the school.

But this is also the price one must pay for being Michele Crispino’s sister, and it's a punishment she must carry with pride and dignity, even if it’s too late for any of that to salvage her—and Mickey’s—reputation.

"Are parallel universes real?"

Sara blinks, turning instinctively as someone sinks into the chair beside her—a girl with hair so red it has to be dyed, short and wavy around a sunlit smile.

"Oh no," the girl says, clucking her tongue good-naturedly. "Not the best way to start a conversation, huh. You're giving me a 'what, are you a nerd?' look."

It takes Sara a few more blinks to recover. "I’d say this is more of a—" She waves vaguely at her own face. "—'I don't want to be here and I don't know what's happening' face. It’s nothing personal." Sheepishly, she sticks out a hand. "Sara."

The girl's grip is firm, but her hands soft and warm; it translates, somehow, to the smile she gives Sara. "Mila."

"Mila," Sara repeats, the syllables full and pretty. "Mila who believes in parallel universes."

"Oh—I was actually just reading off of that—" Mila lets go of Sara’s hand to gesture towards the black board—where a multi-colored, all-caps _are parallel universes real_ had been scrawled in chalk on the bottom right corner. "But sure, I’ll bite. What do you think?" 

Sara makes a face. "I think there are better things to be doing on a Tuesday than sitting in silence for an hour in detention."

"True, but it could be worse," Mila says, a flurry of movement as she takes things one by one out of her backpack, completely at home right where she is. " _You’re_ Sara, huh. Lucky I found the right person to sit beside. I guess the teacher gossip was true."

"Teacher gossip?" Sara blinks, suddenly shy as she pulls her hand back to her lap. "What teacher gossip?"

"I heard a couple of them talking about how a Miss Sara Crispino had landed detention for the first time in her whole high school career," Mila says, cocking a grin. She has a childish voice, and childish mannerisms, and it’s in odd juxtaposition with the way her eyes shine a little too thoughtful. "An impressive record, though, if you ask me. What broke it?"

"Um—" Sara worries at her bottom lip, sparing a quick glance at the teacher overseeing the detention. He’s busy flipping through an old library copy of _The Reader’s Digest_ , and Sara’s rolling her eyes by the time she turns back to Mila and says; "I didn’t really—I’m covering for my brother."

That earns her a curious frown. 

"It’s a long story." Sara sighs—a patented one only available to her when it comes to dealing with matters that involve Mickey. She waves a hand. "What’s your story?"

"You haven’t heard? I’m the Mila who punched her boyfriend during lunch today. " Mila’s eyes widen in genuine delight, like nothing’s more amusing than Sara continuing to be ignorant of school gossip. "Or—my ex now, I guess. Does that ring a bell?" 

Sara blinks.

For a whole second, she’s sure she’d misunderstood, but before she can ask Mila to repeat, much less string together a decent response herself, the teacher gets up heavily, clapping so half-heartedly that the sound barely carries.

He starts reading off a page—guidelines, _sixty minutes of total silence, you hear me,_ total _silence_ —but Sara’s already distracted. Mila’s still moving, apparently experienced in ignoring both the teacher and the stares she gets when she tears a blank page off a notebook, the sound loud.

Sara stares, too.

When the paper slides into her side of the desk five minutes later, it’s with a rough sketch of what looks strikingly like the two of them, haphazardly colored-in with markers—they’re lying down on grass, heads pillowed in their own arms, a cartoonish doodle of the sun glowing in neon highlighter yellow above them. 

Below it, in dark-inked handwriting, Mila had written: _If parallel universes are real, there’s gotta be one where we’re not stuck in detention._

And, further under, with no segue: _What’s your_ _ideal vacation_? 

Sara has to giggle at the childishness of passing notes, despite how elaborate this one might be. When she looks up, Mila has her eyebrows raised, lips pulled into a permanent grin, and it’s hard not to warm up to a stranger, when that stranger has eyes as bright as Mila’s. 

So, smiling back, Sara takes the pen that Mila wordlessly offers her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"So I searched up more about this—" Mila says, in their last detention of the week, plopping down heavily next to Sara. "And I think I’m starting to believe in it."

The abruptness of her arrival jostles Sara into dropping her phone, sends it falling onto her desk with a rattle. Instinctively, she averts her eyes from her phone screen, where her last message to Mickey, sent two and a half days ago, sits unread.

She blinks at Mila instead—her hair, redder than ever, is up in a mini-ponytail today, waves messy around her face, and her hands are splattered with paint, faded like she’d attempted to scrub the stains off and had given up halfway. She looks like she’d run here, and she’s still a little breathless when Sara finally finds her words; "Sorry, what?"

"Parallel universes!" Mila says, like she’d been waiting for Sara to ask. "I think I’m starting to believe in them."

Sara keeps blinking.

"Sorry, what?" she repeats.

"I stayed up last night Googling all this stuff, right," Mila says, rubbing her hands together. "And I learned a _lot_."

"You _stayed up_ for this last night?"

"The past couple of nights, actually. It’s really interesting," Mila gushes. "There’s a whole bunch of theories about the multi-verse—like, math people have tried to figure it out, and physics people have their arguments, but it’s _unreal._ People say parallel universes can actually exist because if there _were_ more than one universe, they’d have to start repeating themselves at some points—which means there must be another Mila and Sara somewhere out there."

Sara’s not quite following. "R-Right."

"Wouldn’t that be cool?" Mila says, hands up in the air. "If there really is another version of you out there? That actually is _not_ in detention?"

Sara starts to laugh, but the vibration of her own phone cuts her off, too loud and attention-catching against the wooden surface of her desk. It vibrates twice, but it’s enough time for five heads to turn to their corner of the classroom, for Mila to immediately stop talking, and for their teacher to look up to check the clock.

Sara almost hates Mickey for choosing this very moment to reply. Almost.

His reply is short, and Sara’s no longer laughing.

 _I won’t be home tonight_.

It’s the same thing he’d texted her, two days ago.

She fights the urge to sigh, but she knows she doesn’t quite manage, because she can feel Mila staring, blatant concern radiating off of her in palpable waves. She doesn’t say anything, though, offering no comments on whatever must show on Sara’s face, and Sara appreciates it.

When the teacher gets up to mark the official start time by reciting the usual set of guidelines, Sara slides her own notebook towards Mila, smile weak as she mouths; _Tell me more._

She doesn’t think Mila quite understands her words, but the message is communicated well enough, because Mila smiles back, dragging the notebook over to herself.

When Mila starts drawing, that concentrated expression on a face more visible now with her hair pulled back, Sara lets that distract her, forces herself to just look and not think.

It works, for the most part.

 

 

 

True to his message, Mickey isn’t around when Sara gets home that evening.

Their parents aren’t worried, so she knows for a fact that he’s staying at Emil’s— _has_ been staying at Emil’s, who’d somehow managed to completely avoid Sara at school, even if Mickey hadn’t been as successful. It’s always Sara who runs the other way, though, when she sees her brother, takes another route to her next class or skips her locker altogether.

It makes it difficult for her to make up with him, when she’s still too frustrated about their situation to even confront him.

It makes it all the more difficult, when he’s not even around.

As it is, dinnertime is a subdued affair, nothing but quiet chatter and the soft murmur of the TV from the living room. It’s an unfamiliar thing, after years of growing up around Mickey—Mickey who always had a story to crabbily tell on behalf of Sara, every time their parents asked about their day at school, and Mickey who had the tendency to spoon vegetables he didn’t like into Sara’s plate, because that was how they functioned, always a see-saw in perfect equilibrium.

Until recently.

Growing up with a sibling close in age, much more a twin, meant that things were always shared, fraternal they may be, and this went from sweaters to leftovers to Emil, who had been around so much from such an early age that he might as well be Sara’s blood brother, too. Emil is family as much as Mickey is, even if being Sara’s twin lent Mickey an advantage, when it came to some respects.

It doesn’t surprise her, though, that Emil would take Mickey’s side, the first time he had to pick one.

Except it’s not really a fight—not when Sara doesn’t think it’s something she should ever have to apologize for. She’d said her spiel, two days ago, and if it’s space that Mickey needed, if it’s space that he’s attempting to find in staying over at Emil’s, then it’s just something Sara would have to accept, even if it means quiet dinners and the reminder of what’s missing, when Mickey isn’t around.

They’re getting too old for this, though, she tells herself. Too old to _not_ know what it’s like to function without the other nearby.

It’s still weird.

It’s a long time before she realizes that her mother is trying to talk to her. It takes a hand on top of hers before she does, and it’s to concerned eyes that she looks up.

"Is it Mickey?" her mother says, gently. Beside her, Sara’s father doesn’t say anything—neither of them have said anything at all about the situation, though they’ve made it clear they were around to talk, and Sara suspects her parents might have an inkling, that they might even be okay with it, their two children having what is, essentially, their first fight.

"I—" Sara says, and finds horribly that her voice is raspy. She clears her throat. "No, I—Sorry, I was just thinking—" She frantically searches her head, past Mickey, past detention, past Mila and parallel universes. "Um—prom. I was thinking about—prom."

"Oh?" That gets her mother to retract her hand, at the very least. "Oh, yes. That’s coming up, isn’t it?"

So is graduation, Sara doesn’t say. "In—in a few weeks," she manages weakly. "I bought my ticket some time ago, so—" Without Mickey. "I should, um, go looking for dresses soon."

"Right!" Her mother claps her hands together, and Sara’s part-relieved, part-disappointed, that her diversion had been so easily taken. "I can go with you, if you want?"

It shouldn’t be so strange, the idea of going with her mother anywhere. But it is, because it’s always been Mickey—Mickey who’d always taken it as a responsibility to be the older sibling, no matter how far a length he might take that obligation.

Sara takes a second to wave all that away before she manages a smile. "Sure."

By the time she gets into bed that night, she feels all sorts of heavy, exhausted in every way she could be. It’s exhaustion only possible at the end of a busy week at school, and it sinks into her bones. Sleep still doesn’t come easily, though, and she lies there for hours, dimmed screen open to the last message from Mickey.

Her phone vibrates, and for a split unthinking second, she feels hope surge in her heart.

But instead of a new blue bubble, it’s a new message chat altogether, three consecutive texts from an unsaved number.

_hey hey hey its mila!!!_

_got ur number from [undisclosed source], but just couldn’t wait til monday detention to show u this!!_

The message after that is a link, and when Sara clicks on it, already smiling, it takes her to a 5-minute TedEd video.

YouTube brings her through a loop of related videos from there, and the last thing Sara remembers before she falls asleep is the sound of cosmologist Sean Carroll breaking down molecules for his audience—and underneath all that, a soft subconscious undercurrent of a memory, Mila’s voice, gushing.

_Wouldn’t it be cool if there really is another version of you out there?_

 

 

 

 

 

"Did you give Mila my number?"

Seung Gil’s instinctive glare has never intimidated Sara, and it doesn’t intimidate her now, plopping beside him at his usual lunch table with the sunniest smile she could muster.

"Who," he deadpans.

He’s actually talking, though, actually _looking_ at her, and that’s always a promising sign.

Sara scours the far end of the cafeteria until she finds a familiar flash of red hair—where Mila’s sitting with two boys, one as fair as the other is dark, and they make quite a sight, squeezed in around the same small table right by one of the corner windows. They’re far enough that Sara deems it safe enough to point, nudging Seung Gil.

"Her," Sara says. "Mila."

"I don’t know who that is," Seung Gil says, flatly, apparently done with this conversation already. "Why are you here."

Sara lowers her hand, making a point not to look at the other end of the cafeteria, where no doubt Emil and Mickey are seated at their own table—a table Sara had once shared with them, but a table that she, nonetheless, doesn’t dare approach now.

"There’s only a few months before grad, you know," Sara says. "I should sit with my other friends, too."

"We’re not friends," Seung Gil is quick to say. "And you _don’t_ have other friends."

That’s bold, coming from someone who has sat alone during lunch for as long as Sara can remember, save for when Phichit Chulanont takes a break from his school newspaper duties to join him. Phichit who—

"Oh," Sara says. "She got it from Phichit."

"A silly thing to be surprised about." Seung Gil’s stare is equal parts weary and annoyed. His sigh is even more so when he repeats, the next words staccato; "We’re not friends. Leave me alone. Right now. Your brother—"

"We’re eating lunch together, aren’t we?" Sara points out, ignoring the way her stomach drops at the reminder of Mickey. "Besides—"

"Your brother," Seung Gil repeats, cutting Sara off in a way that would be terribly rude if it isn’t the sort of thing she’s learned to expect from him, "is coming this way."

Sara’s first instinct is to be _sure_ that Seung Gil’s messing around with her—but Seung Gil is not the type, has never been the type, and when she looks up, almost knocking over her water bottle, Mickey _is_ on his way, Emil surprisingly not in tow.

She wishes she wasn’t so aware of how sad, how _harried_ , Mickey looks, but it’s hard not to be, when it’s a look she knows better than anyone else.

Sara can tell, though, from the moment that Mickey stops in front of their table, visibly counting to ten in his head, breathing evenly, that this is Emil’s idea. A look behind Mickey to where Emil is sitting, sheepishly giving her a thumbs-up, just about confirms this.

It takes Mickey a couple of beats, long enough for Seung Gil to get over whatever his initial reaction was and return to his lunch with an annoyed huff.

When Mickey speaks, every syllable sounds robotic. "I’m coming home tonight."

Sara blinks up at him, listening to Seung Gil attack his food with more gusto than he ever does anything that doesn’t involve his dog. "Okay," she says, slow. Careful. Afraid to scare him away.

Mickey _clearly_ wants to say something else—he always does—but whereas he would have blurted it out ardently before, he makes a conscious effort to snap his mouth shut this time, gritting his teeth so hard as he looks at Seung Gil that Sara’s own jaw hurts.

"Mickey," Sara starts.

"That’s all I came to say," Mickey pushes out, with even more visible effort, tearing his eyes—almost a glare, but still not quite—away from Seung Gil. It’s always so easy, to keep track of every change in Mickey’s body language. "Bye."

Sara doesn’t manage to finish her own _bye_ before he’s spinning on his heels, stomping back towards Emil with movements so robotic they rival the kind of cyberpunk movies Emil loves to watch.

She watches him go.

She’s never had to look at his back walking away from her before.

"Next time," Seung Gil says, toneless, "can you not do that here. It attracts unsavory attention."

Sighing, Sara steals one of his fries and declares _that_ unsavory.

 

 

 

 

Having Mickey back in the house isn’t much of an improvement.

They circle around each other awkwardly, for once wary with no outlet for their emotions and concerns—no space to talk about it, when it’s easier to avoid each other even in their own house, and no metaphors or shared experiences to hide behind instead of confronting the issue directly. Dinners are less quiet, but Mickey is a much more subdued version of himself nowadays, and the quiet chatter carries, just with the fourth member of the family.

Mickey shuts himself up in his room, and he’s not _mad_ at her, Sara knows. He can never be mad at her. But there is a constant undercurrent of frustration and confusion and childish resentment that he projects around her, all mixed into this one expression that he wears every time he’s forced to look at her, like someone having to deal with rejection from their own family member.

Which, Sara supposes, is exactly the case here.

She still doesn’t want to apologize for it.

Instead, she busies herself with school, with online window-shopping for prom dresses, with articles about parallel universes and conspiracy theories, courtesy of Mila, who, in the span of two weeks’ worth of detention, had skipped from a welcome distraction to a gregarious acquaintance to a _friend_ , plain and simple. They’d fallen into the habit of taking the bus home together, which left for more time to talk about things without the constraint of drawn and hand-written things.

Not that those haven’t been helpful. Through sketches and doodles and lazy scribbles, Sara has managed to glean several facts about Mila. She’s a junior, a year younger than Sara. Her ideal vacation is somewhere cold and snowy, where she won’t feel bad for staying in by the fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate. She likes art—drawing in particular, and her medium preference ranges from charcoal to graphite to plain old pencil. She prefers the Star Wars prequels, but she's not sure if it's because of Hayden Christensen or Natalie Portman. She'd grown up, according to her, with "basically three brothers, and two brother-in-laws in the works", all three of whom were obnoxious in their own way—a childhood history that she claims taught her how to grab attention and retain it better than it taught her anything else.

And grab it, she does. 

Mila’s a quiet presence, but there’s something magnetizing about her, something entrancing. When she smiles, it’s infectious. When she talks, it’s hard not to listen. If attention-grabbing truly was a learned skill, then it’s something so ingrained in Mila it might as well be innate, and Sara falls prey to it every time, sometimes spending seconds on end staring while Mila frowns her way through drawing her reply.

Like now.

There’s about fifteen minutes before detention is up, and Mila has spent the last ten minutes working on her drawing, leaning her arm over it so Sara can’t see. Sara stares at Mila’s face instead—at the concentrated furrow in her brow, the purse of her lips, the way she wiggles the top of her pencil a little bit every time she lifts it.

Sara has never had to learn someone else’s body language before—not when she could read Mickey and Emil’s better than she can predict her own—but Mila is a fascinating study in new and unfamiliar things, may it be being so good at holding Sara’s attention or just looking up at her now, sensing Sara’s worry before Sara even fully registers it herself.

Mila’s hand goes down flat to cover the drawing, but on the corner of the page—they’d switched to full A4 pages now, always torn off one of Mila’s sketchbooks—she writes; _What’s wrong_?

Sara reaches up to smooth out her own frown, miming a soundless laugh, before using the same hand to give Mila a thumbs-up.

It’s meant to be reassurance, but Mila doesn’t drop it even after the end of detention, picking up the paper and towing it away from Sara’s eyes. "I’m still not done. I’ll give it to you tomorrow," she says. And then; "Okay, so what’s wrong?"

"Nothing—" Sara almost says, before backtracking at the incredulous look on Mila’s face. "No, it was just—my mom was supposed to go prom dress shopping with me today, but I got a text and—she had to cancel."

"Oh." Mila blinks, and Sara realizes how she must sound.

"I mean, I could go by myself, of course!" Sara says, attempting to sound convincing when she can’t even remember the last time she’d gone anywhere by herself. "It was just—I had a list of stores planned and everything, and I was really looking forward to getting this out of the way today, but—"

"I could go with you," Mila says, so nonchalantly that Sara bites down on her tongue to stop her own rambling. "I mean, if that’s cool."

Sara blinks. It’s so easy, so much more polite, to refuse—but then she’d be denying herself _something,_ she knows, in denying herself more time with Mila.

Too shy, she says; "Are you sure?"

Mila brightens quickly. "Of course! It’s a Friday. I have nothing else planned." She shrugs. "And it’s not like I want to go home, either."

It’s a relieving thing to hear, and it’s strange, how Sara’s heart skips a beat at Mila’s blatant willingness to come along—it’s happiness, for sure, but something else.

Whatever it is, she waves it off, smiling as she zips up her backpack. "Let’s go?"

Mila, as always, smiles back. "Let’s go."

 

 

 

 

An hour, two stores and three tried-on dresses later, Sara’s never been more glad about asking someone to go with her.

Going to the biggest mall in the area on a Friday afternoon, an hour delayed compared to everyone else thanks to detention, means that by the time they get there, the food court is packed with teenagers, the line-up to the movie theater visible from meters away, and the mall so crowded that Sara has to line up just to get a look at any of the directories scattered around every floor.

It’s a huge comfort that she’s with Mila, who seems immune to crowds and the general mall atmosphere out of sheer willpower, like if she turns both herself and Sara away from flocks of other high schoolers and stubbornly believes the broken escalator is actually a staircase, it would work just fine.

And it does, though Sara is not without guilt.

"Sorry for dragging you along," she says, when they get to their third stop, as breathless as they would have been if they’d speed-walked through a race track to avoid getting run over. "I really didn’t think it was going to be like this." 

"Nah." Mila’s already rooting through a rack. They’ve come a bit late in the prom season, with prom only weeks away, and it's like navigating a labyrinth, finding a dress. "I should look around, too."

Sara frowns, absently running her hand through the skirt of a nearby dress. "Are you going to prom?"

"It’s _your_ prom, not mine," Mila says, but she sounds thoughtful. "I can’t really go unless I’m, you know, going as a senior’s date. I _was_ going to go with my boyfriend, _but_ —" She holds up a fist, surprising Sara into a giggle. "You know how it is. Worth it, though."

" _Mila_ ," Sara says, horrified, but she’s still giggling.

"What about you?" Mila says, after a beat. Her voice turns soft, and had it been anyone else, Sara would think it was hesitance. "Do you have a boyfriend? A date in mind?"

The idea seems to Sara a little too distant right now, truthfully; it _would_ be nice to get a date, but that’s always been impossible, with Mickey around. She’d thought about it, sure, and maybe that was the root of her frustration, maybe that was what had Sara fighting with Mickey to begin with.

Prom is something she wants to attend because she’s a firm believer in attending all high school social functions, but it would be nice, she’d thought, to be able to go about it like any other teenage girl would—experiencing the ups and downs of prom preparation without an older brother hovering, however much he might mean well.

"Not really," Sara says, swallowing around a lump in her throat. She’s always had Mickey to fall back to, when she needed someone to go with her, but it feels like admitting defeat, to say that out loud. "I haven’t thought about that recently."

"Really?" Mila sounds genuinely surprised. "Did you break up with someone or something?"

"No, no, no," Sara says hastily. "Nothing like that. No one relevant."

"But didn’t your brother slash some guy’s front tire?"

The guy had been bothering Sara at her locker all week at that point, and she’d been getting better at ignoring it, she really has, when he didn’t seem to be taking her attempts at polite rejection. But Mickey was Mickey, and Sara doesn’t know if she should be glad that her brother hadn’t punched the guy in the middle of the hallway instead, though that was thanks only to Emil and whatever magic he’s capable of when it comes to restraining Mickey.

"No one relevant," Sara repeats. "And technically, _I_ did that."

"Because you owned up and got the detention for it. Right." Mila nods. "I thought that was, like, a protective gesture. I mean, a little fucked up, honestly—" She’s just mindlessly going through hangers by now. "—but men always have fucked up ideas about chivalry that no one asked for."

Sara laughs, a little on the weak side but genuine. "How wise of you."

"I say a lot of nuggets of wisdom, don’t I?" Mila cracks a grin—before biting around it, her questioning apparently not finished. "But really? No one at all? Not even the guy you were sitting with at lunch this past week?"

"Seung Gil?" Sara blinks, surprised that Mila even bothers sorting through hundreds of students sharing the cafeteria to look for her. "I mean, once upon a time, I _was_ interested, but—Seung Gil wasn’t."

"Why _not_?" Sara makes the mistake of looking up at Mila, who looks sincerely stumped. "That’s so silly. You’re pretty, you’re nice, you’re smart—"

Sara’s aware she’s fighting back the beginning of a surprised blush, and she clears her throat, turning away to do her own ruffling through the dresses, not really seeing. "Mila—"

"It’s true," Mila says simply, but Sara sees her turn away, too, pulling out a dress and perusing it with a little too much focus.

"Seung Gil," Sara says anyway, "isn’t really—I mean, I don’t think he really minds anyone else knowing this, but—I don’t think it’s exclusive to _me_ , if you—if you know what I mean."

Mila gets it easily. " _Oh_."

"Yeah." Sara smiles. "I’m just not—his type. By a long shot. So definitely not as silly as your boyfriend."

That gets Mila to turn back at her, dress momentarily forgotten. "Why’s that?"

"I mean," Sara says, slowly, only to realize she has no idea what she wants to say. She shrugs, failing at nonchalance. "Whatever he did to make you want to punch him—obviously, he had no idea how lucky he was to be dating you."

Mila’s eyes widen just the littlest fraction at that, and Sara knows she’s surprised her. But then Mila tugs her lips back up into the usual smile. "I _am_ a good catch, aren’t I?"

Sara laughs, cheeks warm. "The best."

"Speaking of good catches," Mila says, raising her eyebrow at the dress that Sara had pulled out absently in an attempt to distract herself. "That looks nice. You should try it on."

Sara hadn’t really been paying attention, but it _is_ a nice dress—it’s a rich purple around a tube top, going lighter past the torso and leading to a gradient of colors down the skirt, almost white at the very edge of the bottom hem.

Though not as white as the one Mila herself had brought out; hers is almost a transparent white, the color of freshly fallen snowflakes, and the skirt has beautiful folds, reminiscent of a ballerina tutu.

The white would look beautiful, with Mila’s hair.

"I’ll try it on," Sara says, pushing the words out, "if you try that on."

It doesn’t take much convincing; it’s Mila that drags them both over to the dressing rooms, happily pushing Sara into the first free cubicle.

The dress fits Sara’s height well, and it’s a nice contrast, close against dark skin and dark hair. She’d been worried about feeling like an eggplant, but it’s nice enough; she finds herself fixating on the smallest things, like how it makes her shoulders look, how much longer her hair seems against it, how a silver necklace will be pretty against the bare skin above the top of the dress.

And how it would look, were she to stand in this dress next to Mila.

She doesn’t have to wonder, because Mila’s knocking on her door, tugging her out.

For a moment, they just stare at each other.

"Not to be cliche," Mila says, "But I feel like someone should be crying right now. Like in, what’s that called—"

" _Say Yes to the Dress?"_ Sara guesses, her throat suddenly dry. "Those are for weddings."

Mila’s blinking very fast. "I know."

Mila does look like someone from a wedding, the white dress falling on her like something out of a fairytale; all that’s missing are roses and baby’s breath in her hair, maybe a pair of actual fairy wings.

The mental image jostles Sara out of her reverie, and she blurts out; "It’s beautiful—"

—at the same time Mila says, in a much more subdued hush; "You look pretty."

They stare at each other again.

And then they’re both laughing, giggles turning open-mouthed as they turn to their reflections at the end of the dressing room space, Mila linking her arm through Sara’s.

They do look nice, side by side.

Sara takes a mental snapshot. "You should get it," she murmurs.

Mila hums. "I’m not even going to prom."

"You could wear it, next year," Sara says, but the words taste weird on her tongue.

Mila hums again. "I could."

"If you don’t get it, I’ll get it for you," Sara tells her, even when they both know that no high schooler has the money to buy two overpriced prom dresses.

Mila indulges her anyway, smiling. "Fine, fine. It _is_ a pretty dress."

It’s not just the dress that’s pretty, really, but that feels too cheesy for the moment.

Too cheesy even when Mila had said the same thing to Sara earlier, no shyness, no hesitation.

But it’s too late to say anything else, and Sara smiles through all the selfies Mila insists on taking, allows herself to take a few actual snapshots, too.

Maybe, in another world, parallel-universe Sara would have been able to say it.

The thought is comforting, and that's how she knows she’s been spending too much time rewatching the videos Mila sends her.

By the time they get out of the store, there’s more breathing space in the food court, and Sara doesn’t have anything to complain about when Mila pulls her around by the hand, jumping from one place to the next.

They’re more hungry by mental conviction than actual hunger, and they end up with a large banana split, shared between them in a corner booth.

"What’s it, like, being a senior?"

Sara frowns, popping her plastic spoon out of her mouth. "I’m literally a year older than you, you don’t have to make grandma jokes—"

"I wasn’t going to!" Mila laughs. "I’m just—it seems like a world of difference, you know?"

"Being a senior?" Sara says, frown deepening as she thinks it through. "Not really. I mean, yeah, I guess, but being a year older doesn’t really make you any, I don’t know, better? At getting your life together."

"True," Mila agrees. "But what’s it like, being forced to move on anyway? Despite not having your shit together, I mean."

Sara doesn’t have to think this one through. "Terrifying."

Having to graduate and accept the fact that she’s going to be an adult sooner or later is always easier to stomach when it’s just a concept, an idea, a principle of something she understands is bound to happen at some point. But it’s an entirely different feeling to be face-to-face with that notion, for it to not just be a possibility but impending reality, set to happen no matter how active or passive a role she plays in it.

So it’s terrifying, because yes, life moves on, it’s forced to move on as much as she is forced to move on from what she realizes now is the coddling and sugarcoating of high school—it all goes on, and it’s scary, when she’s trying so hard to catch up even when she has no idea what she’s doing.

"Maybe in another universe," Sara says, absent-minded as she traces idle lines on the whipped cream. "There's a version of me who knows what she's going to do."

Mila shrugs. They’re sitting side-by-side, and the shrug jostles Sara, more an elbow nudge. "I doubt it."

Sara nudges her back. "Why?"

"Because no one ever knows what to do," Mila says, simply. "I’m convinced that people who are, like, semi-content with their life has accepted that they’ll never be sure about anything. Otherwise, you’ll go a little mad from having to think about that all the time. So. No one knows. It’s a lie. False advertisement. Has to be." 

Sara thinks it over. "Except in the world where they _do_ know what to do. Parallel-universe Sara has to know."

Mila laughs. "Fair enough."

She has a lovely laugh—she opens her mouth wide and throws her head back like she wants the whole world to hear her laugh, to feel her joy. 

So Sara soaks it all up, soaks it all up like Mila is the sun. 

And it’s not terrifying at all, to lean against Mila’s side and bask in that warmth.

 

 

 

Sara’s fight with Mickey, in retrospect, had been in the making since Sara had first met Seung Gil, the first day of senior year.

They’ve been paired up as lab partners, and Seung Gil, to anyone who hasn’t heard him talk to them, had been pretty and stoic and mysterious. Sara had wanted his number, both out of personal interest and for the sake of class partnership, but Seung Gil, being Seung Gil, had coldly brushed her off.

Mickey just happened to see, waiting outside Sara’s classroom for her.

At the time, Sara had just stopped him from snapping at Seung Gil, and, unthinking of her words, had said, wearily;

"I don’t need you to handle things for me all the time, Mickey."

She hadn’t been mad, hadn’t even been annoyed, but that had calmed Mickey down.

Or—she’d thought it had. Looking back at it now, it was plain surprise on Mickey’s face when she’d said that, shock at having to process the words and realize he’d heard right.

It’s the same face he made two weeks ago, when Sara had confronted him about slashing the front tires on someone else’s car, all out of whatever chivalrous obligation he felt as her brother. It had progressed from there, and she doesn’t remember most of the fight now—just remembers exasperatedly telling Mickey she’ll take punishment and he has no say about it, just remembers talking very fast and very loud and Mickey standing there with that face, like for once in their lives, Sara’s speaking a completely other language.

She might as well be.

But she knows it’s unhealthy; she knows it’s not right to be that dependent.

Especially with graduation looming.

With separation looming.

Time, Sara supposes, has the unfortunate tendency to do exactly what she doesn’t want it to do; it will pass slowly when she wants it to pass quickly, will pass too quickly when she doesn’t want something to be over quite yet.

So it should be expected, really, that with everything else coming up fast—graduation, prom, real life—the end of her three weeks of detention does, too, her last day coming on a Friday too sunny and too pretty to be a winter afternoon. It should feel gratifying, knowing that nature might as well be celebrating her last day of punishment, but it’s hard to feel that way when all she can think about is not having an excuse to see Mila everyday anymore.

Mila, who’s sitting cross-legged at the very edge of the hallway when Sara turns the corner.

They blink at each other.

"You’re early today."

Mila grins, unabashed and cheeky. "I skipped my last period, actually."

Sara frowns. "Why?"

"Not feeling it today," Mila says, and offers no explanation past that, getting up and dusting non-existent dust off her jeans. "It’s too nice out, don’t you think?"

Sara can’t disagree with that.

"It’s also too nice out to go to detention today," Mila continues, and Sara recognizes the mischievous curl of Mila’s lips now. "Don’t you agree?"

It takes Sara half a minute to understand. "You want to skip detention."

It’s not really a question, and Mila knows it. "Let’s go, Sara?"

Sara likes the way Mila pronounces her name—her _s_ sounds not quite fully sibilant, her _r’s_ nice and lilting, and her _-ah_ ’s at the end of the name always somehow enthusiastic.

She blames that when she sighs and says, not quite as unwilling as she wishes she was; "Let’s go."

 

 

 

 

"What about him?"

Mila looks up from her sketch to squint, following the tip of Sara’s tortilla chip to where she’s pointing at an old man wearing a pastel pink fedora, walking a—

"Is he walking a _pig_?" Mila says, delighted, already dropping her pencil to pull out her phone. "Maybe it’s a gift from a grandkid."

"Maybe." Sara thinks about it, digging around for another handful of tortilla chips. "Maybe he thinks it’s the reincarnation of his dead spouse."

Mila laughs. "That’s definitely it. But that would make it a little fucked up that he has it on a leash."

Sara reddens at that. "Old people can be kinky, too."

Mila keeps laughing, stealing her own handful of chips.

They’ve relocated to the nearest public park; it’s warm enough outside that sitting on the grass under the sun is comfortable, as long as they have their coats on. The park is relatively populated—too many joggers, a few families, a few young couples walking hand-in-hand—and, ten minutes into watching Mila start sketching in her sketchbook, Sara had taken to entertaining herself by pointing at people and making up ridiculous stories for them.

Mila joins in every now and then, but mostly she just laughs, which makes Sara feel all sorts of warm and proud, and makes skipping detention so worth it.

"What about those kids?" Mila says now. "Hide and seek?"

She’s using the eraser tip of her pencil to point shamelessly at a group of three kids—a long-haired girl and two boys—arguing behind a tree.

Sara watches as one boy pushes the girl, only for the other boy to swoop in, yelling petulantly in a way only six-year-olds can ever yell.

It’s a little too familiar.

"Could be fighting over who gets to lock their self into the tree," Sara says quietly. "Like cryopreservation. But with a tree."

Mila raises an eyebrow. "No, I’m pretty sure they’ll die."

"They’re six," Sara says, like that explains it.

"True," Mila agrees. "Run away from this life now while you still have it easy."

"No graduation destinations to think about."

"No art portfolios to start planning when you still have a year left in high school."

"You don’t have to know how taxes work."

"You don’t have to know how to spell mortgage."

"Prom is the least of your worries."

Mila blinks—ahead, then at Sara. "You worry about prom?"

Sara’s saved from answering when another girl comes rushing out of nowhere, pointing at the three kids and shrilly screaming; _Found you_!

"Oh," she says instead. "Cops and robbers."

Mila frowns. "What?"

"Cops and robbers? It’s like tag." Sara chews on a tortilla chip, thoughtful. "Didn’t you ever play cops and robbers as a kid?"

Mila isn't fazed by the question—unsurprising, but it still makes Sara frown back at her. "Nope?"

"Ever?"

"Nope," Mila repeats, emphasis on the _p_. 

"Didn't you grow up with three brothers?"

"Yeah, technically, but they were—" Mila pauses, face scrunching up. "—I can't imagine my older brothers, you know, liking playground games much."

"Not even when they were really little?"

"I can't imagine them ever being children, really. They were just—older brother figures." Mila shrugs. "Annoying. Overdramatic. A little too prone to being existential at the dinner table. That sort of thing."

Mila speaks about them like they’ve _always_ been older, always been like that, and Sara can’t imagine that—not when she’d grown up side by side with Mickey, every step of their life taken together, and it’s not hard to imagine him, nor Emil, as a child. If Sara thinks of herself as she was when she was a child, she thinks of Mickey as a child, too.

"Did you ever fight with them?"

"Oh, sure," Mila says, a bit on the incredulous side. "Who doesn’t fight with their brothers?" 

Sara doesn’t know what to say to that.

"You have to fight with siblings at some point," Mila points out. "Or, I mean—siblings are really the only people you can freely fight with. Because it’s not like they can walk out of your life forever. I mean, I guess they could, but not when you’re both young and stupidly fighting over who finished the milk, you know?"

"What if you want nothing to do with your brother anymore?"

Mila peers at her, curious, knowing. "If you’re worrying about it, then I don’t think that’s what you really want. When you don’t care, you don’t care. In the end, we choose our family. That goes for, like, blood relations, too."

Sara swallows, reaching into the bag of chips. It’s empty, and she sighs, loud. "I guess."

Mila takes the bag from her, laughing as she folds it twice over. "Want to come over?"

Sara blinks up at her, watching Mila get up. "To your place?"

"Yup," Mila says, holding out her hand. "To my place."

Sara doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to refuse Mila, so, naturally, she takes the hand.

 

 

 

 

Mila’s room is full of drawings.

Drawings of people, drawing of scenery, lazy doodles, all taped to different parts of her wall. There are hand-drawn postcards above her desk, torn pieces of paper by the window, and there’s an entire corner of her long desk that’s just scattered with piles of paper.

"You’re really good," Sara murmurs, moving from one sketch to the next, all taped beside each other to Mila’s wardrobe door.

"You’re only realizing this now?" Mila says. She’s on her bed, cross-legged in front of her laptop. "After I’ve spent the last three weeks drawing for you?"

Sara can’t exactly say that she keeps all of her notes with Mila, held together in a paper-clipped pile by her bedside. Out loud, she says; "I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, _maestro_."

Mila grins. "Apology accepted."

There’s a clatter from downstairs—the front door rattling.

Mila sits up. "Yura?"

There’s a pause, and then steps thundering up the stairs. Mila’s door flies open, and Sara barely has time to recognize the fair-haired boy she sees eating lunch with Mila before there’s a sofa cushion flying straight against Mila’s face.

Sara watches on, horrified.

Mila, unfazed, sends the cushion flying right back, so hard that the boy stumbles outside the door. "Welcome home, Yuri. Behave in front of my guest, will you?"

"The school called, old hag," the boy—Yuri—mutters, stomping back into the room and offering a stiff nod towards Sara. "Said you skipped today."

Mila hums, flopping back against her bed with clearly practiced nonchalance. "Vitya’s skipped more than I have."

"I don’t care," Yuri grits out. "But they said you get another week of detention or some shit."

Mila sits up abruptly at that, eyes wide. "For skipping a class?"

"No, for skipping detention." Then, for good measure, he adds; " _Hag_."

With that, Yuri slams the door behind him, yelling _I’m going out with Beka!_ through it before he’s audibly running back down the stairs.

Sara’s still staring at the closed door.

"I—"

"Crap," Mila says, sheepish. "I—I landed you another week of detention, didn’t I."

The implication, honestly, hadn’t even occurred to Sara during the commotion. She frowns. "Oh."

"And that was my youngest brother," Mila adds. "I—Sorry."

"No, it’s fine," Sara says, and finds that she means it. Another week with Mila. "It’s really fine."

Mila stares at her for a bit, before accepting that with a shrug, patting the space beside her on the bed.

It’s a strange thing to realize, as she goes to sit down, that this is Sara’s first time in a friend’s bedroom.

She tries not to think about it too much as Mila takes her restlessly through Netflix categories, but it nags at her.

When they settle on a B-grade horror movie, Mila settling back so that she’s leaning against Sara—Sara looks at her, looks at Mila and her long eyelashes, her bright eyes, her lovely smile as she turns to look up at Sara, staring right back.

"Thank you," Sara says, even as she feels a little silly doing so, "for having me over."

Mila clearly finds that odd, but she laughs, nodding and leaning in closer.

Sara leans in right back, and it’s nice, so nice.

 

 

 

 

It’s completely dark out by the time Sara finds it in herself to head home.

Mila insists on walking her to the bus stop, rejecting all of Sara’s attempts to discourage her, and they walk out huddled together, arms linked and hands in each other’s pockets.

"It’s so cold out now," Sara whines.

Mila waggles her eyebrows. "You have me to keep you warm."

Sara laughs and nudges her away, but it doesn’t quite work.

Mila’s neighborhood is quiet and still, the bus stop empty when they get there. Sara doesn’t let go of Mila, waits instead for Mila to do so, but she doesn’t, and they stay like that, bound in a corner of the bus shed.

The edge of Mila’s neighborhood is slightly higher than the rest of town, and Sara thinks she can see her own house down under them, if she squints and thinks hard enough.

"Are you going to say something like ‘Mila, don’t you feel small at night—‘"

Sara half-heartedly nudges at her again. "I’m not the one who went home and started believing in parallel universes—"

"You believe it, too, now," Mila points out.

"Because you kept sending me links!"

"That you didn’t have to read."

She did, though. Because they’re from Mila.

It takes a few cars passing by before Sara realize she’s said that out loud.

Mila’s smiling when Sara turns to her, panicked. "You’re quite the smooth one, aren’t you, Crispino?"

Sara doesn’t know what to say to that, so she settles for a nervous laugh.

Mila hums, faux thoughtful. "Maybe I got myself in detention because I found out you were going to be in it."

Sara stares. 

"No, you didn’t," she says, suddenly a little breathless.

"I didn’t." Mila grins. "But parallel-universe Mila sure would have, since I didn’t."

Sara manages a smile. "That’s not how it works."

"Nope," Mila chirps. "But it's a nice thought."

Sara hums, and she feels Mila tighten her arm around Sara’s. "Maybe in another world."

"Maybe," Mila agrees. "I'd have done it in this world, too, though."

Sara feels her mouth fall open, just a little bit. 

She swallows. "Mila—"

But then the bus pulls over that very moment—Sara hadn’t even noticed it approaching—and the words, whatever they were going to be, die in her throat.

Sara, reluctantly, moves to retract her arm—

—only for Mila to pull her in, her lips just barely brushing Sara’s cheek.

And then Sara’s being pushed towards the bus. 

When she turns back, Mila’s wiggling her fingers at her in a goodbye wave, smile dazzling.

Sara waves back, stumped for words.

They’re still waving at each other through the window when the bus pulls away.

It takes a while, for the warmth of Mila’s brief kiss to fade from her cheek.

 

 

 

Mickey’s waiting for her at the bus stop.

She’d texted him when she’d been five stops away, says _I’m almost home_ because it had felt wrong, that she hadn’t told anyone in her family where she went.

Mickey doesn’t ask where she’s been, though, and they walk home in near silence.

It’s strange, when they’ve walked like this so many times, have walked down this road side-by-side too many times to remember. But never like this, with something that needs to be talked about so huge between them, and with Sara still reeling, her head far away.

It hadn’t been a big deal for Mila, fighting with her brothers. But it does feel like a big deal to Sara, who’s never known what it feels like to not be on the same wavelength that her brother is on, who’s never appreciated the unconditionality that comes with family simply because she’s never had reason to question nor doubt it.

She does now, and she knows it’s what Mickey’s feeling—not rejection, exactly, nor anger at being pushed away for once. Just confusion, unable to understand why things have to change.

But things always have to change, when people grow up.

_Siblings are really the only people you can freely fight with._

_Because it’s not like they can walk out of your life forever._

Sara knows that Mickey will never walk out of her life for good.

She’s not sure Mickey knows that she won’t, either.

"Mickey?"

"Hm."

"I’m sorry."

Mickey turns to her, stopping in his tracks. "You’re not."

"Not for what I said," Sara says, stopping, too. "But for how I said it."

Mickey stares at her—and it will never stop being so easy to look at him and know what he’s thinking, to look at him and know that among all the Saras scattered around parallel universes, this one was lucky enough to be born with a twin brother.

"I’m not taking it back," Sara says, softer now. She thinks of how it would have been nice, if she’d had more time to be friends with Seung Gil, if she’d had more time to go to other people’s houses. She thinks of all those people in the park, those children playing cops and robbers.

"There’s a world out there, you know?" she continues, but with more conviction, more certainty, than she’s ever thought it. "You should get out more."

Mickey’s quiet for so long, but Sara doesn’t avert her eyes, doesn’t move.

Eventually, he says, a near inaudible murmur; "I don’t want you to leave me alone."

And oh—it’s that same look, stricken, scared.

Graduating high school is even more terrifying, Sara thinks, for someone whose life has always revolved around taking care of someone else.

Someone who’d been told, all those days ago, that he was no longer needed.

"You don’t even know where I’m going for college," she says softly. "We could still go to the same place."

"I'll go where you go," Mickey says, stubborn. "Wherever that is."

Sara sighs. "You can’t." 

"Can't what?"

"Think like that."

Mickey looks so _young_ , and Sara’s reminded that for all that he loves to act like the older brother, they’re only apart by minutes, and he’s in the same boat that she is, fear and uncertainty and all. "Why not?"

"There’s a world out there," Sara repeats. She thinks of Mila now—of all the things Sara wants, from her, for her, from all the months she has left in high school. "Worlds, even. Other Micheles, other Saras. It doesn’t always have to be just us."

Mickey sighs, but Sara knows when she’s won; for all that Mickey is forced chivalry and false bravado, Sara has always been the firmer one between the two of them, has always made the decisions, has always led.

She doesn’t know why it took her this long to realize that.

"I’m trying," Mickey says. "I’ve _been_ trying."

Sara smiles. "I know. Thank you."

When she starts walking again, he follows, falling to step beside her out of pure habit, and it feels, finally, like she’d said all she needed to say.

"There’s someone I want to ask to prom," Sara says, because if anyone should know first, it’s Mickey. It’s always Mickey.

She hears him inhale sharply, only to let it out in an equally sharp exhale. "Is it Emil?"

Sara, despite herself, laughs. "No, no. Between the two of us—" She looks up at him. "I don’t think it’s me he’d want to take to prom next year."

Mickey ignores that. "Is it that Lee kid?"

"Nope," Sara says. "Seung Gil and I are just friends."

"Then I have no idea," Mickey mutters. "Is it the person you were out with today?"

Sara hums, which to Mickey might as well be a loud, resounding _yes_.

Mickey grunts. "What’s his name?"

They’re arrived in front of their house now, and Sara waits until Mickey’s unlocked the front door before she says; "Her. Her name’s Mila."

To Mickey’s credit, his body doesn’t react at all. His face is turned away from Sara, though, and she allows him that much, brushing past him into the house.

"Thanks for picking me up," Sara says. "Good night, Mickey."

"Yeah," he says, quiet, and it occurs to her that this is the first time they’ve said _good night_ to each other in three weeks. "Good night."

Sara falls into her bed giddy—giddy because to tell Mickey something means to set it in stone, to tell Mickey is to be sure of it, for it to be something she can’t take back.

She doesn’t want to, anyway; the more she thinks about it, the more _right_ it feels, the more _necessary_. So she digs out her stash of all the notes she’d shared with Mila, spreads them around her desk.

And gets to work.

 

 

 

 

"Can you stop drumming your knee under the table?" Seung Gil mutters, as near snappish as he can get. "Or better yet—leave. Why do you keep sitting here?"

"Seung Gil," Sara says, sweet. "It’s because we’re friends. And I need to spend as much time with you before we never see each other again."

Seung Gil snorts, but one really learns to work with the bare minimum when dealing with Lee Seung Gil, because a part of Sara rejoices when he doesn’t deny it.

"Can you let me off the hook just for today?" she says. "I’m a very nervous lady."

"No," Seung Gil says, shortly. And then; "Why?"

"Why am I nervous?" Sara forces the smile wider on her face. Her stomach lurches. Trying to channel Mickey, she says; "Because I’m awaiting the reply of my beloved."

It’s almost comical, how much Seung Gil looks like he regrets asking, if Sara were in the mood to giggle.

It’s been half a school day since she’d left her drawing in Mila’s locker, and Sara’s reached the point of helpless overthinking; over the course of the lunch hour alone, she’s regretted every single thing she’s ever done from the moment she’d popped out after Mickey, has questioned the necessity of what she’d done, has considered transferring schools, even.

By the time lunch is over, Seung Gil has to directly nudge her off her seat just to he can get out, and Sara lets herself be dragged, blindly following Seung Gil as he throws out his lunch, absently smiling when she passes by Mickey and Emil’s table.

She doesn’t even notice it when Seung Gil separates from her, dragging herself over to her locker with a heavy chest, a heavy stomach and heavy feet.

Then she sees red hair in the periphery of vision, and it feels like someone had doused her in ice water.

Mila’s locker is halfway across the hall, and it’s hard to miss her, even among student after student rushing to get to their locker and to their next class.

Sara takes in the situation in snapshots: Mila standing in front of her own locker. Mila taking out a piece of paper from her locker. Mila unfolding it. Mila reading it.

And—with Sara still frozen in place—Mila turning to her and meeting her eyes right across the hallway.

Sara jerks her gaze away, busying herself with rearranging the notebooks in her locker.

The hall’s near empty by the time Sara hears the locker next to hers rattle, and when she looks up, it’s Mila leaning against it, piece of paper held daintily in front of her.

"Hey," Mila says.

"Hey," Sara replies, trying for casual and probably failing.

"I got your note," Mila says, unfolding the paper. "It _is_ for me, right? Otherwise, this would be very embarrassing."

Sara had worked on it all weekend—mostly because she’d scrapped so many drawings, had tried again and again. Even now, she’s not sure if she’s satisfied with the end result.

But here it is, held up between them, a very amateur drawing of two girls in dresses, unrecognizable if not for the care Sara had put into coloring the sketch. She isn’t a terrible artist, per se, but what she lacked in refined skill, she made up for in coloring: the red of Mila’s hair, the purple of her own dress, the starry backdrop behind them.

Underneath, Sara had written: _In another world, parallel-universe Sara has the courage to ask you out to prom herself._

_But as it is, this Sara doesn’t._

_So — will you go to prom with me?_

"Sara Crispino," Mila says, very seriously. "This is a very cheesy gesture."

Sara deems it safe to smile, close-mouthed. "I _am_ a very cheesy person."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Sara says. "I’ve never done this before, you know."

Mila folds the paper, careful. "Really? Because you’re doing a very good job wooing me right now."

Sara coaxes her own smile wider. "Is that right?"

Mila murmurs a quiet _mhm_ , stepping forward. "You know I did it on purpose, right?"

Sara follows Mila’s movement, notice the exact moment they’re only inches apart. "Did what?"

"Make you skip detention last Friday," Mila says—it’s so quiet, inaudible had she not been so close. "So I can get more time with you."

Sara hums. "I suspected."

Mila cracks a grin. "You know me so well already."

She barely finishes the sentence before she’s leaning in, Sara meeting her halfway so that the kiss is off-center at first—chaste but long and warm, even though it couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, a few beats of Sara’s heart before Mila’s pulling back with a smile.

Sara searches Mila’s face. "Is that a yes?"

" _Sara_." Mila, suddenly, starts laughing, half-giggles that turn into loud laughter in the hall—empty now, Sara surely late for her next class.

She can’t feel bad about it, though—not when Mila tugs her forward, hand on Sara’s wrist, and, just before kissing her again, murmurs; "What do you think?"

Sara thinks This-World Sara wins this round, too.

 

 

 

Mickey, unsurprisingly, opts to stay home on prom night. 

Emil comes over, apparently okay with doing so now that he knows the twins have made up, and they set up camp in Mickey's room.

Sara finds them arguing over a half-hearted FIFA game about whether to watch something new or do a rewatch marathon. For a couple of minutes, she just watches them through the open door. 

_In the end, we choose our family. That goes for blood relations, too._

Sara hadn’t chosen Emil and Mickey, necessarily, but she will if she had to; they’ve been a team for so long, her and Mickey and Emil, family before they even knew what that really entailed, and she’ll choose that over and over again, if she had to.

She knocks.

Emil beams wide and bright when he sees her. "Oh, you look so beautiful, Sara!"

Mickey pinches Emil's arm, but it doesn't look like it hurts too much, despite his good-natured yelps. "Watch it."

"Mickey," Sara sighs, holding up a silver necklace. "Can one of you help me?" 

Mickey's movements are awkward when he gets up to do it, even though he's done this hundreds and thousands of time—can probably do this in his sleep, waiting for Sara to brush her hair away so he can lock the necklace.

When he pulls away, he clears his throat, but what he says, completely unexpected, is; "You don't look like an eggplant."

Maybe, in another world, parallel-universe Sara doesn't have an older twin brother who knows her this well, whose mind is an extension of hers, when they want it to be. 

"I know," she says. "It's the first thing I checked."

"Sara?" Their mother’s voice from downstairs. "Your date’s here." 

Mickey’s close enough to feel Sara freeze, and then he’s searching her face, always in tune with the rare times she’s ever completely nervous.

"Go, go, go," Mickey says, slightly weary, after a long second. "Tell your date to have you back by—"

That relaxes Sara some. " _Mickey_."

"It’s not _me_ ," Mickey points out, but he’s already walking away, shoulders still stiff. "It’s Mom and Dad that want you back by midnight."

"No way the prom’s going to be done by midnight," Emil chirps, waggling his eyebrows as Mickey sits back down next to him. "Have fun, Sara!" 

Mila had insisted on picking Sara up, claiming that it was to avoid Yuri’s teasing. Sara suspects, however, that Mila teases Yuri more than she ever gets teased by him.

Mila’s never one to be argued with, though, and Sara runs down the stairs now, eager to spare Mila, at least, from having to make polite small talk with Sara’s mother.

She stops at the bottom step, nearly tripping.

She’d seen Mila in this dress already, and she thought she’d be prepared—except Mila’s hair is slight up now, a few curled strands around her face, and she looks less like abridesmaid and more a princess about to be crowned, looking up at Sara, eyes blinking with as close to shyness as she’s ever seen on Mila.

"Hello," Sara says, quiet. 

Mila laughs, because Mila always laughs, smile and eyes as bright as when Sara had first met her. "Let’s not do this again," she says, reaching a hand out towards Sara. "I have something for you."

"For me?" Sara comes forward in two quick steps, only half-aware that her mother had left them alone in the entryway. "Is it a corsage?" 

"Good guess. That, too. I’ll give it to you when we’re taking our prom photos, just for, you know, the aesthetic," Mila says, clearly restless. "But—no, not quite." 

When Mila pulls something out of her clutch, it’s not a corsage at all—but a piece of folded paper, which Sara takes with one shaky hand, unfolding it. 

She recognizes the _what’s wrong?_ written on one corner of the paper first, blinking fast as she looks at the rest of it.

It’s the same drawing from their first day of detention together—only bigger, more refined, with tiny details like the color of Sara’s eyes and the texture of the grass underneath them.

It’s beautiful, and it’s Mila’s, and Sara understands, why it had taken Mila so long to give this to her.

At the bottom, Mila had written; _In another world, Mila and Sara are detention buddies._

_In this one, Mila wants Sara to be her girlfriend._

_Will you go out with me?_

"I was going to ask you out," Mila says, soft and shy and hesitant, "if you didn’t ask me to go to prom. But you did."

"But I did," Sara says, just as soft. "Does the offer still stand?" 

Mila blinks—once, twice, thrice. "Yeah," she says, and Sara feels smug, at how breathless she sounds. "Yeah, if you want it."

"I do want it," Sara says.

"Okay." Mila nods, and the jerkiness of the movement makes Sara smile. "Okay."

"Okay," Sara echoes, staring at the paper one more time. Parallel-universe Sara stares back up at her, next to parallel-universe Mila.

However many other versions of her may exist out there, none of them, surely, are as lucky as she feels right this moment—not as lucky as she’d felt standing by Mickey’s door and realizing she has two brothers to be thankful for, not as lucky as she is to even _be_ graduating, not as lucky as she is standing in front of Mila, leaning in for another kiss and realizing that this is hers, as well as her whole future, stretching out ahead of her, no matter what she ends up doing with it.

In a parallel universe, maybe there’s a Sara who already knows what she wants to do. Maybe there’s a Sara who’s a musical prodigy, or maybe a professional athlete. Maybe there’s a Sara who’s not waiting for college acceptance letters, a Sara who doesn’t even have to worry about college.

But in this one, she’s just a girl, just barely coming out of the comfort of childhood—just a girl stumbling into new relationships, just a girl wrestling with new things about old relationships, just a girl realizing the world, the universe, _life_ is so much more than anyone can ever fathom.

In this one, she’s just a high school senior whose problems aren’t magically solved by the multi-verse theory, but it’s not so bad.

It’s not so bad at all.

This time, it’s her that holds out the crook of her arm towards Mila. "Let’s go?"

Mila—bright and beautiful Mila, who’d walked that first day of detention into Sara’s life with sketchpad pages and multi-verse theory articles—smiles back.

"Let’s go."

 

**Author's Note:**

> [mila](https://thieve.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/elie-saab-dress-featured1.jpg) and [sara](http://style.vjmedia.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ES-1.jpg)'s dresses are both designs by elie saab.


End file.
